• 

  No, you won?t be skilled enough to drive the joystick car. But neither will your video gaming progeny ? or theirs, either. No matter how good they get with joysticks, the technology is unlikely to ever transfer to the road. Photo Gallery

Every now and then, the photos of this Mercedes-Benz drop into our email inboxes, with the note that there is something amazing about the car.

No, it’s not the scissor doors, you read as you scroll down the email. Nor is it the horizontal-lifting bootlid, you’re assured.  The amazing thing, you’re told, is the joystick control, which ‘is coming soon and means you won’t be skilled enough to drive this car’.

This assumption is made because you can presumably read. Which means you haven’t spent your entire life in front of the WiiPlayBox gaming console that is equipping the next generations to drive, steal cars, race cars – and with recent sport games, admittedly, stand up and remember that their legs and arms are hinged at the bendy bets and can actually move if you want them to.

But thank goodness those virtual sport games arrived, just in time to ward off the need for a console to teach teenagers how to breathe. Iron Lung Rally 3, anybody? Induced Coma Gran Turismo?

However, we’re meandering off the topic (hey, at least it’s movement). No, you won’t be skilled enough to drive the joystick car. But neither will your video gaming progeny – or theirs, either.  No matter how good they get with joysticks, the technology is unlikely to ever transfer to the road.

The manufacturers have certainly given us enough time to get used to the stick as a way for steering the car. When Bertha Benz nicked the keys to the first one back in 1888 and set off on a 100km joyride, it was a stick she used to control the Patent Motorwagen, as the vehicle was enticingly called back then. Which probably shows the marketing departments haven’t progressed as far as the engineering departments.

And in the more than 100 years since then, the joystick steering system had only a brief – and fairly unsuccessful run. And even if it’s become a popular way of playing video games, it’s getting even further away from being a common way of playing with cars.

The proof? For a start, scientists tracking evolution of the vehicle herd are already noting the disappearance of any connection between the human hand and the stick already fitted in the cabin. The one you can use to change gears. Remember?

And secondly, even with a big round, easy-to-grip-and-turn thingy in front of us – the one called a steering wheel -- a fair proportion of us still fail to point our cars in the right direction.

If there’s something amazing about the emailed Mercedes-Benz, which you’re generally told is the ‘new CSL600, due to arrive in showrooms soon’, it’s that it’s actually a concept car called the F200 that first appeared at Paris Motor Show in 1996. And that means it still looks good nearly 14 years later.